We Must Control the Second Amendment Conflict

The side that controls the language of an argument controls the argument, and the side that takes and maintains the offensive controls the entire conflict. The enemy must then react to our actions instead of making us react to his, and continue to react until he is no longer capable of fighting. We are indeed at war with an adversary with whom good faith and win-win negotiation are not possible.Recognize Incrementalism for What It Is

Incrementalism is the process whereby an aggressor who cannot achieve his entire long-term objective immediately will seek to do it a piece at a time. The free world's failure to take seriously "Germany today, tomorrow the world" brought untold misery to millions of people. The Arab approach to the destruction of Israel also is incrementalist: Gaza and the West Bank today, and Tel Aviv tomorrow.

The anti-Second Amendment camp's agenda also is incrementalist. Dianne Feinstein now talks about so-called assault weapons, but we must not forget her openly stated desire to ban all handguns -- even revolvers. "If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them ... Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here." That's all we need to hear, and all we need to know. This is the civil rights version of "Germany today, tomorrow the world."

I do not own any firearms with high-capacity magazines, so Feinstein's success would not affect me. Only a fool, however, negotiates with or tries to appease an incrementalist, because this simply encourages him or her to take even more. An intelligent person destroys the incrementalist before he grows too strong to stop, putting a permanent end to his entire agenda. This is what England, France, and Czechoslovakia should have done to Germany when it demanded the Sudetenland in 1938, noting that Germany was not yet ready for war. Israel should have done the same to the Arabs when it had the upper hand in 1967; the demolition of the Aswan Dam would have rendered Egypt incapable of further violence for a long time.

Legal and nonviolent methods are meanwhile available with which to demolish anti-Second Amendment organizations and political careers, and we must now use these methods with no restraint whatsoever. The anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March had a no-debate policy, so I did not try to debate my civil rights with it; I destroyed it by helping to expose its misuse of tax-exempt money for electioneering. No more Million Mom March, no more problem. As stated by Shakespeare's Richard of York, "Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still / Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill."

Control the Argument and Take the Offensive

It was one matter for Cato the Elder to say "Carthago delenda est" ("Carthage must be destroyed"), and another for Rome's legions to lay the city in ruins and then sow the fields with salt. Intelligent and diligent effort was necessary then, and it is now. The first step is to control the language of the conflict.

The enemy has committed himself to the demonization of certain semiautomatic firearms by calling them "assault weapons," which is itself an outright lie that we can turn against the enemy. An assault weapon is, by definition, a firearm that is capable of fully automatic fire: an Uzi, M-16, or full-auto AK-47. It is already illegal to own any assault weapon without a $200 federal permit. The Violence Policy Center can meanwhile be targeted for using tax-exempt money to deceive the American people as to what an assault weapon really is:

Assault weapons-just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms-are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons-anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun-can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

There it is, in Josh Sugarmann's own words. The Violence Policy Center, a 501(c)(3) "tax exempt educational organization," says openly that it plans to exploit the public's ignorance as to the difference between semiautomatic and fully automatic weapons. This provides our side with a potentially devastating scandal with which to discredit the enemy, by turning his own language against him.

The language issue also applies to so-called Saturday Night Specials: small, inexpensive handguns with relatively small ammunition capacities. Our side must call them Negrotown Saturday Night Specials, and add that "Negro" was not the word that the racists who coined this term used. Their agenda was, of course, to make handgun ownership prohibitively expensive for black people who wanted to protect themselves from night riders and other Kluxers.

Apply Psychological Warfare

Psychological warfare is the only military weapon that it is legal for anybody -- be he a government, private organization, or individual -- to use during peacetime. The enemy is already using it by exploiting the Sandy Hook massacre to advance his agenda. We can turn this around by arguing persuasively that Dianne Feinstein, Michael Bloomberg, and Barack Obama welcomed this atrocity as an opportunity to appeal to emotion instead of reason. Rahm Emanuel's "Never let a good crisis go to waste" is a matter of record, and we can hang these words around the other side's neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross. To this we can add Obama's total lack of remorse over the 150 Mexican citizens and the U.S. law enforcement officer his Justice Department helped to murder through Operation Fast and Furious. This involved more than 2,000 gun felonies (straw purchases).

The dishonesty of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also is well-known. He once proposed suing firearm manufacturers for violence in public housing projects, even though the manufacturers distribute their products only through firearm dealers who are licensed and approved by the federal government. Disgraced former NY governor Eliot Spitzer also tried to sue gun manufacturers, and he also can be a poster child for his side's ethics, character, and integrity.

We can meanwhile use their association with the Million Mom March, its misuse of tax-exempt money, and its highly creative Form 990 tax return, to demolish the credibility of every public figure who was involved with it: Dianne Feinstein, Jerrold Nadler, and other prominent enemies of the Second Amendment. Note especially that all these individuals signed their names to the proven lie that "12 children in the United States are killed every day by gun violence." The American people are not interested in anything a liar has to say, and we need to act on this quickly.

William A. Levinson, P.E. is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.

The side that controls the language of an argument controls the argument, and the side that takes and maintains the offensive controls the entire conflict. The enemy must then react to our actions instead of making us react to his, and continue to react until he is no longer capable of fighting. We are indeed at war with an adversary with whom good faith and win-win negotiation are not possible.

Recognize Incrementalism for What It Is

Incrementalism is the process whereby an aggressor who cannot achieve his entire long-term objective immediately will seek to do it a piece at a time. The free world's failure to take seriously "Germany today, tomorrow the world" brought untold misery to millions of people. The Arab approach to the destruction of Israel also is incrementalist: Gaza and the West Bank today, and Tel Aviv tomorrow.

The anti-Second Amendment camp's agenda also is incrementalist. Dianne Feinstein now talks about so-called assault weapons, but we must not forget her openly stated desire to ban all handguns -- even revolvers. "If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them ... Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here." That's all we need to hear, and all we need to know. This is the civil rights version of "Germany today, tomorrow the world."

I do not own any firearms with high-capacity magazines, so Feinstein's success would not affect me. Only a fool, however, negotiates with or tries to appease an incrementalist, because this simply encourages him or her to take even more. An intelligent person destroys the incrementalist before he grows too strong to stop, putting a permanent end to his entire agenda. This is what England, France, and Czechoslovakia should have done to Germany when it demanded the Sudetenland in 1938, noting that Germany was not yet ready for war. Israel should have done the same to the Arabs when it had the upper hand in 1967; the demolition of the Aswan Dam would have rendered Egypt incapable of further violence for a long time.

Legal and nonviolent methods are meanwhile available with which to demolish anti-Second Amendment organizations and political careers, and we must now use these methods with no restraint whatsoever. The anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March had a no-debate policy, so I did not try to debate my civil rights with it; I destroyed it by helping to expose its misuse of tax-exempt money for electioneering. No more Million Mom March, no more problem. As stated by Shakespeare's Richard of York, "Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still / Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill."

Control the Argument and Take the Offensive

It was one matter for Cato the Elder to say "Carthago delenda est" ("Carthage must be destroyed"), and another for Rome's legions to lay the city in ruins and then sow the fields with salt. Intelligent and diligent effort was necessary then, and it is now. The first step is to control the language of the conflict.

The enemy has committed himself to the demonization of certain semiautomatic firearms by calling them "assault weapons," which is itself an outright lie that we can turn against the enemy. An assault weapon is, by definition, a firearm that is capable of fully automatic fire: an Uzi, M-16, or full-auto AK-47. It is already illegal to own any assault weapon without a $200 federal permit. The Violence Policy Center can meanwhile be targeted for using tax-exempt money to deceive the American people as to what an assault weapon really is:

Assault weapons-just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms-are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons-anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun-can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

There it is, in Josh Sugarmann's own words. The Violence Policy Center, a 501(c)(3) "tax exempt educational organization," says openly that it plans to exploit the public's ignorance as to the difference between semiautomatic and fully automatic weapons. This provides our side with a potentially devastating scandal with which to discredit the enemy, by turning his own language against him.

The language issue also applies to so-called Saturday Night Specials: small, inexpensive handguns with relatively small ammunition capacities. Our side must call them Negrotown Saturday Night Specials, and add that "Negro" was not the word that the racists who coined this term used. Their agenda was, of course, to make handgun ownership prohibitively expensive for black people who wanted to protect themselves from night riders and other Kluxers.

Apply Psychological Warfare

Psychological warfare is the only military weapon that it is legal for anybody -- be he a government, private organization, or individual -- to use during peacetime. The enemy is already using it by exploiting the Sandy Hook massacre to advance his agenda. We can turn this around by arguing persuasively that Dianne Feinstein, Michael Bloomberg, and Barack Obama welcomed this atrocity as an opportunity to appeal to emotion instead of reason. Rahm Emanuel's "Never let a good crisis go to waste" is a matter of record, and we can hang these words around the other side's neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross. To this we can add Obama's total lack of remorse over the 150 Mexican citizens and the U.S. law enforcement officer his Justice Department helped to murder through Operation Fast and Furious. This involved more than 2,000 gun felonies (straw purchases).

The dishonesty of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also is well-known. He once proposed suing firearm manufacturers for violence in public housing projects, even though the manufacturers distribute their products only through firearm dealers who are licensed and approved by the federal government. Disgraced former NY governor Eliot Spitzer also tried to sue gun manufacturers, and he also can be a poster child for his side's ethics, character, and integrity.

We can meanwhile use their association with the Million Mom March, its misuse of tax-exempt money, and its highly creative Form 990 tax return, to demolish the credibility of every public figure who was involved with it: Dianne Feinstein, Jerrold Nadler, and other prominent enemies of the Second Amendment. Note especially that all these individuals signed their names to the proven lie that "12 children in the United States are killed every day by gun violence." The American people are not interested in anything a liar has to say, and we need to act on this quickly.